Making the Most of an Unusual Situation
by Queen of the Castle
Summary: When Draco makes a stupid mistake, he finds that it turns out to be to his benefit. He's not the only Slytherin to take advantage, though. Draco/Regulus slash.


Author's Notes: Written for rarepair_shorts, with a 2,500 word limit. Contains incest, sex between two 16 year olds, and mild issues of consent.

* * *

Perhaps kicking a stack of unidentified magical objects was dim-witted. Honestly, though, it seemed like a better target for Draco's ire than the Vanishing Cabinet, which he couldn't afford to damage further.

As it was, his foot now ached and his sense of balance seemed strangely thrown off. He felt so suddenly and inextricably dizzy and sick that he doubled over and clutched reflexively at his mouth. Once the feeling had (mostly) passed, he attributed it to his constant worrying, much like his crying outbursts and lack of sleep and every other weakness that he'd had to conceal lately.

The room around him looked oddly different, he absently noticed, but he had much more important things on his mind that figuring out why a room that was _designed_ to change had, in fact, decided to change at that particular moment.

Once he'd retreated out into the hallway, unable to bear even _looking_ at the Cabinet anymore, he didn't recognise the smattering of students gathered outside. He doubted that this meant they were there to spy on him, though. It was just because they were in _Hufflepuff_, and he'd never actually _noticed_ anyone stupid and useless enough to end up Sorted there.

Potter, however, _had_ been spying on him lately, which was why Draco pulled back when he rounded a corner only to spot Potter swaggering towards him. He was, for once, flanked by someone who wasn't his pet Weasel or Mudblood. Draco might have believed that Potter was finally moving up in the world, to be suddenly hanging around with someone whose bearing simply screamed '_proper_ pureblood upbringing'. But then, this was _Potter_. He'd made it clear that he didn't have that sort of good taste. Draco was certain, then, that this could only mean that Potter had enlisted help in trying to break into Draco's hiding place.

Obviously, though, Potter was easily distracted, since instead of continuing towards the Room of Requirement he reached out and physically grabbed the Slytherin robes of a boy who'd been walking with his head ducked and shoulders rounded as if trying to avoid attracting attention. Potter and his friend both sneered as they shoved the third boy against a wall.

Draco gasped. Perfect Potter acting like a _bully_ was shocking enough, but the real root of his alarm was the recognisability of Potter's victim's markedly bitter face.

But it couldn't be _Professor Snape_. Even putting aside that he somehow looked younger and was wearing student robes, the Snape Draco knew always walked as if he owned the very air around him. He certainly didn't allow himself to be manhandled or taunted by Potter, who Snape had never once hesitated to cut right back down to size as he deserved.

But really, impossibly, there was no one else it could be. No one else ever looked at Saint Potter with quite that degree of hatred, apart from Draco himself.

Had Draco been some kind of _Gryffindor_, he might have been tempted to step into the fray on behalf of his Head of House. Actually, though, he couldn't see the benefit for him. After all, with the way Snape kept sticking his impossibly large nose into Draco's business lately, perhaps _someone_ needed to teach him a lesson. For once Draco didn't even care if Potter happened to receive the honours.

Draco watched, avid, as Snape fumed impotently (for the moment, at least), trapped under Potter's wandpoint. Focused so intently upon them, Draco found himself studying Potter as well as Snape. There was something about that expression...

Draco blinked, no longer feeling smug.

He'd spent plenty of time glaring across rooms at Potter, not to mention repeatedly nose-to-nose with him as they fought. As such, Potter was just as unmistakeable to Draco as Snape. Draco didn't even need the distinct lack of ugly lightning scar under the rat's nest of hair to alert him that _that_ was not Harry Potter.

Draco threw himself around the corner, then, fully out of sight.

Fuck, was his first thought. And his second. In fact, it took a minute before Draco could calm himself enough to think much of anything beyond a litany of foul language that would have made his Mother _Scourgify_ his mouth.

The first thought after all that was that he _really_ shouldn't have kicked that stupid pile of junk. He remembered that jerking off-balance feeling all too clearly, in

retrospect. He felt like he was experiencing it all over again now, his head spinning from the revelation.

Interestingly, he didn't immediately attempt to find a solution to this phenomenal temporal cock-up. Instead, his thoughts were on the Dark Lord, who in this time had no idea that Draco Malfoy even existed (since, technically, he didn't yet). They were on his parents, who were both out there somewhere, both free and as happy as any proper pure-blooded aristocrat would ever allow themselves to be. Draco thought about how, here and now, the moments that ticked away while he attempted to breathe deeply (was this really what hyperventilation was like?) weren't moments closer to the Dark Lord deeming him a failure and therefore wiping out his whole family.

Perhaps it hadn't been a cock-up at all. Maybe it was some kind of blessing from fate itself (not that Draco believed in _anything_ taught in a rubbish class like Divination, of course) as a reprieve from all the expectations under which he'd been drowning.

He'd have to go back to the Room of Requirement and find whatever time device he'd obviously disturbed. With it, though, he could surely find a way back to exactly when he'd disappeared from his proper time. No one, not even the Dark Lord, would know he'd been gone, no matter how long he spent here.

He could, Draco realised with widening eyes, research a way to fix the damn Cabinet _here_, in the past, so that he could repair it immediately upon arriving back.

"Hiding away from my brother and his sanctimonious shadows, are you?"

Draco jumped at the voice that was far too close for his comfort. He came practically nose-to-nose to the boy he'd seen accompanying Potter... or rather, Potter's father. Except, much like he'd realised that hadn't been the Potter he knew, several differences (the Slytherin robes he wore being the most obvious) let him know that this wasn't _quite_ that same boy.

"What business is it of yours?" Draco snapped.

That tone would have made most Slytherins he knew back off immediately. This boy, however, merely narrowed his eyes for a moment before his expression fell back into casual neutrality. "None at all," he said flippantly. "Except that I think your hiding has more to do with the fact that you don't belong here. The Headmaster might think it's very much _his_ business that some potentially dangerous stranger masquerading as a student is strutting about the school."

Draco had spent hours practicing his own look of careless indifference in the mirror after watching his Father employing it against brainless Ministry twits, but somehow it still felt as if his was now a mere shadow of the other boy's expression. "Please," Draco scoffed, trying to hide his discomfort at not having the upper hand for once. "I could buy the entire Board of Governors and have the Headmaster fired and _disgraced_ if he tried to kick up a fuss."

It was a bluff, of course, since he had no access to the Malfoy fortune in this time and place. The other boy clearly wasn't buying it.

"Or," the boy suggested, "we could avoid all that. I have no love for that Muggle- loving old fool. If you're working against him, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest to keep your presence here quiet... provided you give me a _reason_ to help you, of course."

Draco realised, even if he'd never admit it aloud, that he might actually _need_ help. If he planned to spend weeks or months straight in the school searching for a way to fix the Cabinet, he wasn't sure the Room of Requirement could provide for all of his needs. Even a piece of magic that complicated couldn't just conjure up food from nothing, for one thing. And he could hardly just sneak down to the kitchen, or to the library to do research, and expect not to be caught. If the past several months had taught him anything at all, it was that Dumbledore was a difficult man to get around even when he wasn't at his best. About two decades earlier, well before he began to slip into senility and illness, Draco wouldn't even have _that_ advantage.

Draco, being the consummate Slytherin, was well acquainted with the various benefits of blackmail. He was, however, far more used to being on the other side of it.

"And if I wanted to take you up on that option," Draco said slowly, calculating, "what exactly would you expect in return?"

The boy smirked. "Nothing I'd like to discuss out in the hallway where anyone could see."

Draco didn't know whether he wanted to ask what, exactly, the boy expected them to be caught at. He supposed he'd find out soon enough.

He led the boy back in silence to the Room of Requirement. He looked stunned when the door appeared from nowhere the third time Draco passed it, which made Draco feel incredibly smug, not to mention a bit reassured that at least part of the advantage had passed back to him. Knowledge, after all, was power.

Apparently it was a type of power which didn't hold sway for long, though, for once the boy had looked around at the mass of things populating the enormous room, he turned back to Draco with a gleam in his eyes.

"Private," he commented. "That'll come in handy."

Draco didn't even get the chance to consider whether he should ask why this time, since the boy promptly answered the question with a practical demonstration.

It was a kiss that seemed to be more about dominance than the sort of hormonal _need_ that had always been the drive behind snogging for Draco. Almost everything in Draco rebelled against the idea of someone having power over him like that. _Almost_ everything. Apparently not _enough_ of him, though, because Draco didn't push the boy away. He wasn't even the one who eventually broke the kiss.

The boy pulled his mouth – though not the length of his body – away. Draco blamed the feel of hard muscles still pressed against him for how long his head took to stop swimming.

He'd just been kissed by a _boy_. That was most definitely the first time Draco had even _considered_ having another boy's tongue in his mouth, let alone actually felt the stroke of it against his teeth and tasted a sweetness he would only have expected of a girl's lips. Worse yet, he'd been kissed by someone of unknown origin. There was a world of difference between being a Slytherin and being worthy of actually _touching_ a _Malfoy_.

"You might at least tell me your name before assaulting me!" Draco said, annoyed at the way his voice practically squeaked.

The boy seemed irritatingly amused by it. "Knowing each other's names is hardly a prerequisite," he said. "I've done a lot more with people I've known a lot less about."

Draco scowled. The other boy laughed.

"Regulus," he eventually declared. "My name's Regulus Black."

Draco knew his family trees on both sides well enough to recognise the name right away.

"You're _related_ to me," Draco said, his voice filled with an odd mixture of disgust and wonder.

"Am I? Huh." Regulus shrugged. Really, Draco thought such a discovery should make him jump away like a scalded Kneazle, but somehow (clearly by defying all laws of magic and physics), Regulus managed to lean in even _closer_. Draco had to forcibly suppress hysterical laughter at the thought that _that_ was clearly _not_ Regulus's wand in his pocket. "Well, it would hardly be the first time two Blacks got up close and personal with each other," Regulus said dismissively.

Draco tried not to imagine the connotations of that. His _mother_ was a Black, for Merlin's sake. Still, even that thought didn't seem to dampen his reaction to Regulus flattening his palm low against the front of Draco's robes and _rubbing_.

"Stop," Draco commanded somewhat weakly.

Draco was used to being obeyed. The only time he ever butted heads with someone who didn't look upon him as if he was some sort of god for being a Malfoy (as they rightly should) was his own Father.

Regulus seemed no more Draco's inferior than his Father. He had largely the same blood running through his veins as Draco, and perhaps an even greater sense of entitlement. He might be shorter than Draco by an inch or two, and perhaps slightly younger than him as well, but that did nothing to stop him from pushing Draco down to the ground and following him there.

"Stop?" Regulus asked as he started flicking the buttons of Draco's robe open. He attached his mouth to Draco's collarbone, then followed Draco's chest down as each released button revealed more bare skin for him to bite and lick and suck. Draco squirmed against Regulus's abdomen, his only response a mindless groan.

"I didn't think so," Regulus breathed against Draco's navel.

Draco shivered.

His first time was going to be with a boy, Draco suddenly realised. That would probably itself have been enough to make his Father disown him. But that he clearly wasn't even going to be on _top_ would likely get him buried quietly under the rose beds so that no one ever had to know what happened to the Malfoy heir.

Of course, then Regulus did _that_, right _there_, and Draco forgot that he was supposed to be rolling them over and shoving Regulus on _his_ back, or at least verbally protesting this progression of events.

Anyway, it was hard to protest when Regulus's mouth pressed firmly against his. Regulus's hand wrapped around him, and any thoughts Draco might have had shifted abruptly into the glorious blankness of pure sensation.

The need to protest didn't come back until much later, when Regulus smoothed the robes he'd slipped back on and said, "I'll come back in the morning with breakfast or something." Draco wanted to shout after him that Malfoys were _always_ the ones who did the leaving, but it was too late for that, because Regulus had, indeed, left already.

After having thoroughly dominated Draco all evening, that was just too much.

Well, if he wasn't going to stick around to listen, Draco thought mutinously, when Regulus returned in the morning he'd just _show_ him exactly _who_ was in charge of this transaction between them, blackmail or no.

It didn't occur to him to just tell Regulus to go screw himself when he came back looking for more. After all, Draco told himself, now he had something to prove.

~FIN~


End file.
